The first omnibus made its appearance in New York in 1830, the name itself originating from the word painted upon this vehicle. The first street railway was laid two years later. The era of the stage coach was at this time beginning to end, that of canals and railroads opening. Yet in the remoter sections of the country the old coach was destined to hold its place for decades still. Where roads were fair it would not uncommonly make one hundred miles between early morning and late evening, as between Boston and Springfield, Springfield and Albany. So soon as available the canal packet was a much more easy and elegant means of travel. The Erie Canal was begun in 1817, finished to Rochester in 1823, the first boat arriving October 8th. The year 1825 carried it to Buffalo. The Blackstone Canal, between Worcester and Providence, was opened its whole length in 1828; the next year many others, as the Chesapeake and Delaware, the Cumberland and Oxford in Maine, the Farmington in Connecticut, the Oswego, connecting the Erie Canal with Lake Ontario, also the Delaware and Hudson, one hundred and eight miles long, from Honesdale, Pa., to Hudson River. The Welland Canal was completed in 1830. [Illustration: Two horses pulling a rail car.] Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 1830. Salt-water transportation had meantime been much facilitated by the use of steam. It had been thought a great achievement when, in 1817, the Black Ball line of packet ships between New York and Liverpool was regularly established, consisting of four vessels of from four hundred to five hundred tons apiece. But two years later a steamship crossed the Atlantic to Liverpool from Savannah. It took her twenty-five days--longer than the time in which the distance often used to be accomplished under sail. In 1822 there was a regular steamboat between Norfolk and New York, though no steamboat was owned in Boston till 1828. The Atlantic was first crossed exclusively by steam-power in 1838, and the first successful propeller used in 1839. The last-named year also witnessed the beginning of a permanent express line between Boston and New York, by the Stonington route. The next year, the Adams Express Company was founded, doing its first business between these two cities over the Springfield route, in competition with that by the Stonington. [Illustration: Old Boston & Worcester Railway Ticket (about 1837).]